Global Rhythm Diaspora

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This edition in the Ngoma Mix Series focuses on new 125 bpm African Electronic Dance Music. As i have argued in the “Real Roots of Kwaito” piece for This Is Africa, American and European Disco, House, and Hiphop were crucially influential in the beginning stages of development of post-Apartheid South African urban music, but since then SA House and Kwaito have matured and grown into its own skin, much more an extension of indigenous rhythm cultures than related to “Western” dance music. For example the beat patterns in these tracks are distinctly different: the constant off-beat high hats found in the US and Europe are almsot entirely absent; and with much more rich and developed rhythm elements and very different emphasis, this music should probably be thought of as simply new African dance music, with not much to do with what is traditionally known as “House” or “Techno” at all.

Selections come mainly from South Africa and Angola, with lots of percussion, many balafons, a touch of jazz, some diasporic elements from Cuba and Colombia, couple tunes made in Spain, and a shot of Nigerian Pop at the peak. This is the first part, relatively bright in feel: stay tuned for DRUM 2 – the dark side.

Whereas the first Fusion volume was global traditional music fused with Dubstep and Grime, this second one clocks in at 105 BPM and explores the marriage of ancestral sounds and mid-tempo dancehall/moonbahton/hiphop derived beats. Some of the juxtapositions include Mongolian Throat Singing with screwed Techno, Uzbek vocal pop with Norwegian Skweee, Tribal African chanting over Hiphop, and Brazillian tinged percussion with Angolan Urban Beats. The mood is often overcast and cloudy with occasional bursts of heavy thunderstorms.

The FUSION series is decidedly more for listening compared to the dancefloor oriented NGOMA series, but there are certainly some bangers in here for you to scrunch up your face to, alongside more tripped out and lyrical numbers.

NGOMA SOUNDSYSTEM

a trio of DJ, Percussion, and Reed instruments, NGOMA Soundsystem fuses past and future, east and west, ancestral rhythms and hyper-modern sound. Ngoma Soundsystem connects the hottest dance music styles new and old from the Motherland and beyond with improvised rhythmic and melodic invention. Dynamic interplay of live instrumentation with dj and computer makes NGOMA Soundsystem a versatile and powerful musical entity operating against all fictional cultural borders and illusions of separation.

DJ ZHAO

DJ Zhao brings the best contemporary and classic dance music together from all five continents, with focus on Africa. With in depth selections spanning wildly different times and places, DJ Zhao’s remix and mashup work directly connects "East" and "West", acoustic and electronic, traditional and hyper-modern. Amateur ethno-musicologist and professional booty shaker, Zhao is an International Ambas...sador of BASS not only talking about, but demonstrating through raw sound experience, the underlying unity of all earth cultures.

Born and Raised in Beijing, China, and active as DJ and sound curator in the US since 2000, Zhao has organized critically acclaimed long running events focusing on Improvisation and Sound Art as well as Techno. After relocating to Berlin, Germany, and starting the Ngoma collective, Zhao has been performing regularly at clubs and festivals including: